I recall a Canadian guy named Angus in my geography class who said, They say Americans are dumb but a lot of British Columbians cant even name the three states on our provincial norders. Well, I began, Lets see, Washington, Ifaho, Alaska.... Wait, he said, Thats right, I forgot about Alaska because it is, well, you know, up there!. There is also Montana so that makes four. Angus knew a lot about geography but mostly historical geography. But I doubt he was born in BC. For that, you find people who do not think Spuzzum or Sicamous are stranhe names just as Tatamagouche, Ecum Seecum and Neekum Tah and Skir Dhu are not so strange to Nova Scotians, Come-By-Chance and Placentia Bay are not strange to Newfoundlanderz and Sault Ste. Marie (pronounced Sue Saint Marie) and Wawa are not so strange to northern Ontarians and Moose Jaw and Medicine Hat are not so strange to prairie dwellers. It tends to be the native names and ideas that give this country and several provinces their names...Canada, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec. It is just that they are sometimes not easy for non-natives to pronounce and generally unless you live closeby...sometimes especially when you live closeby, you never learn. Misqueam has likely died out as a fluent native speaker language...a Coast Salish language...when I went to UBC in the 1990s, it was down to two old woman fluent speakers of the language, and if that were not dire enough, they were not talking to each other due to some tiff or misunderstanding. I did not realize thd complexity of thought required nor how intimately connected it was to their natural world. I did imagine that they had more words for living things in their area and that there might be different notions of what is living than we have...for instance, mountains or rock as living although with rivers or ice it might seem more logical to us. But I paged through a dictionary on Heiltsuk and it blew my mind. And of course, sometimes dictionaries dont tell much but the mind-associations, words that were similar or from a common root were so different than in English or French. But not quite as strange to a native Breton speaker to whom different mind-associations than in English or French, such as kazh-ki or ki du or the difference on the Breton mind between Aulnes in French and Aôn in Breton as a river name or Loire and loar which are pronounced the same but the word for that river in Breton is Liger. But as in French, a computer mouse, there must be some of you who remember what that was, is the same as the creature in Breton....logodenn And as in French, the words for smile and laugh are closely related...mouschoarzhiñ and choarziñ.. or sourire and rire in French. And two words for river as in French, stêr and avon. You may have heard of that latter word as a name somewhere...just maybe....
Posted on: Wed, 27 Aug 2014 06:35:39 +0000
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